Oblómov

“For Oblomov, lying down was not a necessity as it is for the sick or the sleepy, nor a matter of chance as it is for the tired, nor even a pleasure as it is for the lazy; it was a normal state.” Without moving from his divan, wrapped in a threadbare Asian dressing gown, the protagonist of this novel is the perfect personification of indolence and inactivity. A landowning heir, perpetually absent from a fraudulently managed estate, with a failed career in its administration and an early withdrawal from social life, Oblomov will suddenly experience, after many years and at the urging of his great friend, the enterprising Shtolz, a strange rebirth, a mysterious jolt that for a moment makes him believe in the possibility of another kind of life, one in which trust and love unexpectedly appear.